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Day One In The NBA Playoffs: The Injury, The Upset & The Escape

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The NBA playoffs aren’t supposed to be this newsworthy on the first day, but a devastating injury, a big upset and a potential statement game by a rising star made Day One’s four games noteworthy. TheSportsNotebook recaps all four and looks ahead to Sunday’s basketball action…

Miami 100 New York 67: We’ll start with the one game that had no overarching storyline. The Knicks came into this game with a good frontcourt, and while scoring was in short supply, Carmelo Anthony, Amare Stoudamire and Tyson Chandler led an effort that produced a 41-38 rebounding advantage. The Knicks game into this game with a bad backcourt, which didn’t produce offensive opportunities and turned it over 24 times. The combination of the two balanced out to…well, look at the score, it didn’t balance out. New York won’t look this bad each game out, but the atrocious guard play is why LeBron (who scored 32), D-Wade & Co., will be sending them home in short order.

Orlando 81 Indiana 77: The Pacers looked nothing like the solid favorite in this series and a team that could upend Miami in the next round. Orlando, playing without Dwight Howard, needed a combination of great backcourt play and some Indiana no-shows if they were to get a road win. Both happened. The Magic guards, https://www.thesportsnotebook.com/wp-admin/post-new.phpJameer Nelson and Jason Richardson, combined for 34 points. Indiana ran four guards out there, but even if you add up Darren Collison, Paul George, George Hill and Leandro Barbosa, you only have 22 points. Then center Roy Hibbert turned in an inexcusably weak offensive effort, scoring just eight points in spite of Howard’s absence. It’s easy to say it’s only one game and in the bigger picture of this series it probably is. But those of us how considered the Pacers a legit title darkhorse have to take note of Hibbert’s unproductive outing in a spot where a championship-ready player would have sent a statement and taken over. You can’t tell me Indiana team president Larry Bird didn’t take notice.

Chicago 103 Philadelphia 91: Derrick’s Rose torn ACL is the story all over the mainstream sports media today and that’s completely justified. Rose is out for the playoffs and he was playing like the Rose of old, with 23 points/9 rebounds/9 assists, before going down with 1:20 left. Chicago coach Tom Thibodeau is going to catch flack for having Rose on the floor, but the head coach was completely correct to do so. Strange things happen at the end of games in the NBA playoffs—if anyone should know that it’s a Bulls fan base weaned on Michael Jordan—and you can’t let an opponent off the mat under any circumstances.  Eighty seconds is enough time for several possessions and that meant the Sixers had a mathematical chance. As fans, we can know that’s not a practical chance. As a head coach, Thibodeau has a responsibility to be paranoid. For this series, the Bulls will still win—Philly’s calling card of good defense was non-existent in the Windy City, allowing Chicago to shoot 52 percent from the floor, while Philly’s other calling card of an inability to rebound and for its stars to step up did stay in existence. Andre Iguodala scored 11, unable to lift his game for the postseason and sixth man scoring machine Lou Williams was held to nine.

Oklahoma City 99 Dallas 98: You can look at this game and see a sign that the Thunder aren’t yet ready to win a title, needing last-second heroics from Kevin Durant to beat a #7 seed at home. I see the opposite—if there’s anything the NBA is known for, it’s eventual champions having to pull something out of their posterior in the closing minutes of games they have no business winning and for a superstar to take over at the critical moment. Oklahoma City trailed by seven with 2 ½ minutes left, but rallied and Durant eventually knocked down the game-winner. Go through some past history and you see examples of Bird’s Celtics, Jordan’s Bulls and Shaq’s Lakers being similarly pushed in spots where you didn’t expect it. Whether we include Durant’s Thunder in that group someday is a big if, but the young scoring machine delivered a single performance in that vein on Saturday night. The concern for Oklahoma City is that scoring was very top-heavy, with Russell Westbrook’s 28 and Serge Ibaka’s 22 joining Durant’s 25 in carrying the Thunder offense. For Dallas, you have to wonder if they can continue to hit ten treys a night to give themselves a chance to win games like this. Of course we wondered that last spring and early summer, and fans of the Miami Heat are still wondering. But either way, we certainly can’t expect the Mavs to win rebounding 42-36 like they did in Game 1. The champs are going to wear the belt well and come out fighting like they did last night, but if they were going to win this series, they would have stolen Game 1.

The other four first-round series go today, and you can read TheSportsNotebook’s previews of Utah-San Antonio, Denver-LA Lakers, Boston-Atlanta and LA Clippers-Memphis.

NBA 1st Round Preview: Indiana-Orlando

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The Indiana Pacers hold homecourt advantage in their matchup with the Orlando Magic in the 3-6 spot on the NBA’s Eastern Conference bracket. This is the “What Could Have Been” series, in that we could have had the best two centers in the East face off with Dwight Howard and Roy Hibbert. Instead, the enigmatic Howard is out for the year, Orlando is reeling and this has the feel of a rout waiting to happen. TheSportsNotebook previews the Indiana-Orlando series to see if there’s any hope of an upset…

If Orlando is counting on Indiana to join them on the path to self-destruction, they won’t find any help. The Pacers are a good defensive team, ranking 10th in the NBA in defensive efficiency (points adjusted for tempo) and this is a team that makes its free throws. Five of the top six players hit 80 percent or better from the charity stripe, and the one exception is Hibbert—and even his 71 percent isn’t bad for a 7’2” center. Indiana is well-balanced across its lineup. They have a clear go-to player in Danny Granger at small forward, who averages 19 ppg and is a threat to hit the trey. David West and Hibbert are capable scorers on the blocks and a coalition of guards made up of Paul George, Leandro Barbosa and George Hill provide some backcourt punch. Then throw in Darren Collision running the show and it adds up to a team that, while you can debate how high its ceiling is, isn’t going to hand away wins.

Then there’s the Magic. Howard’s antics about where he would and wouldn’t go at the trade deadline and his perpetual changes of heart about his commitment to Orlando have surely put Brett Favre’s comparatively mild indecision about his future in perspective. More to the point, Howard’s injury has exposed how weak Orlando is on the front line without him. The depth chart lists Glen “Big Baby” Davis as the center. Davis is an easy to like player, as I can attest from my time rooting for him as a Celtic with his hustle and obvious passion for the game. But he’s grossly overmatched in the post and even playing forward in Boston he had issues with getting shots blocked. Ryan Anderson is a quality power forward with 16 points/8 rebounds per game, but his greatest asset is his ability to step out and hit a jump shot. He’s perfect to complement Howard, less so to be a part of a team trying to replace him. Orlando does have guards who can shoot the ball well, with J.J. Redick being light out from anywhere on the floor and Jameer Nelson and Jason Richardson being respectable on the jumper themselves. The Magic also likely welcome back Hedo Turkoglu at small forward after he suffered a broken face bone earlier this month.

To pick up on a point made about Anderson, everything about Orlando’s team screams that it’s been built to play around Howard, which obviously makes sense. If Indiana extends its defense, can Nelson, at age 30, still break the Pacers down with the dribble. Can Richardson create his own shot? Can Redick get open? The matter is further complicated by the fact that the presence of the shotblocking Hibbert and his ability to wipe away defensive mistakes on the perimeter can free Indiana up to be even more aggressive.  When you look at Orlando’s team, as presently constituted—and by the way, Big Baby is nursing an ankle injury and is questionable for Game 1—I find it hard to see anything other than the worst team in the playoffs, and probably worse than non-playoff teams like Phoenix and Houston out West.

There’s a lot to wonder about with Indiana. Can Collison quarterback a championship team? Can Granger be a true elite player in a big-time playoff series? Will any of the Pacers command enough stature to get favorable officiating? All are valid questions. We won’t find out any answers until a presumed second-round matchup with Miami, because Indiana’s blowing away Orlando in four straight.